I have been running Ubuntu and Kubuntu for several years now. Ubuntu is dual boot with WinXP, and Kubuntu is on an external drive. Only one CPU here.

I am leaning towards the Gnome desktop for a couple of reasons. The first and most annoying is the KDE Wallet. The second is load and reaction time. The third is reaction speed. Gnome is reacting faster than KDE. The fourth is just today KDE (Kubuntu) had 278 updates and Gnome (Ubuntu) only had 144. I try to keep both systems similar (same addons from basic install) but I cannot guarantee they are the same. However, it took about 1.5 hours to update Kubuntu, and only about 45 minutes to update Ubuntu.

So far as usability is concerned, I find navigating in Ubuntu a bit easier than in Kubuntu. However, I cannot really say that I like the current Ubuntu interface, but I like it better than Kubuntu.

What you are forgetting about is apparent wind. A long time ago on a small lake in Massachusetts, at a Red Cross sailing camp, at which I was an instructor; I took a group out for an evening sail after dinner. We used a HobieCat, (I forget the actual size, about 14' -16' (30 something years does have an effect)), but it was rated for 4 passengers. I had four passengers, plus myself. The wind was (at the start) from astern, at about 8-10 knots. As we increased speed, the apparent wind moved forward. The further forward the wind moved, the more I trimmed in the sail. As the sail moved in, the less there was 'push' and more 'airfoil' effect became functional. As our hull speed passed the wind speed, we became “close hauled” which is a condition of sail trim where the wind is more forward than abeam. The actual wind was still behind. Our motion was creating our own 'wind'. Even though we were overweight, we actually passed the hull speed of the boat, around 22 knots. I know this as the windward (toward the wind) hull came out of the water, and the leeward (away from the wind) hull started to trip. This occurs when a non planing hull passes its “hull speed” (about 1.34 x the square-root of the water line length (see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_speed ). If you take a non planning hull past its rated speed the bow wake draws the bow down as the stern wake pushes the stern up and the hull will submarine (aka dive). I did not want to get wet, so I let the sail go, and we slowed down. The actual wind had not changed much and we had to beat into the wind to get back to the dock. Kevin